Classic Poem

8. The Phaenix.
There comes on wide wings a bird from the Westward.
He flies to Eastward,
To his garden home in the Orient,
Where grow the spices, perfumed, luxuriant,
And palm trees rustle and springs shed freshness,
And flying, the wonder-bird is singing:
" She loves him! She loves him! "
She bears in her little heart his image,
She bears the sweet and deep-hidden secret,
And herself knows not!
But in her dream before her he stands,
She kisses his hands with beseeching and weeping,
And calls him by name;
And calling she wakes, and she lies in terror,
And passes fair hands o'er fair eyes in amazement.
" She loves him! She loves him! "

*****

'Gainst the mainmast reclined on the high quarter-deck,
I stood and I marked the song of the bird.
Like coursers dark-green, with silver manes streaming,
Leapt on ahead the white-crested waters;
Like trains of swans there came drifting past us
With sails white and gleaming the Heligolanders,
The bold nomad race of the North Sea.
In the eternal blue overhead
Floated the glimmering clouds,
And the sun in his glory eternal,
The rose of the heavens, a flower of fire,
Which joyous the ocean was mirroring;
And the heaven and the sea, and the heart in my breast
Repeated and echoed:
" She loves him! She loves him! "